Monday, May 30, 2016

Memorial Day is a day set aside to remember those who have died in the service of their country.

"Memorial Day was officially proclaimed on 5 May 1868 by General John Logan, national commander of the Grand Army of the Republic, in his General Order No. 11, and was first observed on 30 May 1868, when flowers were placed on the graves of Union and Confederate soldiers at Arlington National Cemetery. The first state to officially recognize the holiday was New York in 1873. By 1890 it was recognized by all of the northern states. The South refused to acknowledge the day, honoring their dead on separate days until after World War I (when the holiday changed from honoring just those who died fighting in the Civil War to honoring Americans who died fighting in any war). For more history of Memorial Day visit Memorial Day History."*

*From the last blog post by a special friend.

Remember - "A day without laughter is a day wasted."
May the wind sing to you and the sun rise in your heart...

Thursday, May 12, 2016

Adobe has released Version 21.0.0.242 of Adobe Flash Player for Microsoft Windows and Macintosh and Version 11.2.202.616 for Linux. The Extended Support Release for Windows and Macintosh was updated to Version 18.0.0.352. Adobe AIR SDK has been updated to Version 21.0.0.215.

The updates are to address critical vulnerabilities that are being actively exploited.

Warning: Although Adobe suggests downloading the update from the Adobe Flash Player Download Center, that link includes a pre-checked option to install unnecessary extras, such as McAfee Scan Plus or Google Drive. If you use the download center, uncheck any unnecessary extras.

If you use the Adobe Flash Player Download Center, be careful to uncheck any optional downloads that you do not want. Any pre-checked option is not needed for the Flash Player update.

Uncheck any toolbar offered with Adobe products if not wanted.

If you use alternate browsers, it is necessary to install the update for both Internet Explorer as well as the update for alternate browsers.

The separate 32-bit and 64-bit uninstallers have been replaced with a single uninstaller.

Verify Installation

To verify the Adobe Flash Player version number installed on your computer, go to the About Flash Player page, or right-click on content running in Flash Player and select "About Adobe Flash Player" from the menu.

Do this for each browser installed on your computer.

To verify the version of Adobe Flash Player for Android, go to Settings > Applications > Manage Applications > Adobe Flash Player x.x.

Additional Update Notes

Adobe Flash Player -- For Windows Server 2012, Windows 8.1, Windows Server 2012 R2, Windows RT 8.1, Windows 10, and Windows 10 Version 1511, Adobe Flash Player is now a security bulletin rather than a security advisory and is included with the updates.

Windows 8.xand Windows 10 -- Non-security new features and improvements for Windows 8.1 and Windows 10 are included with the updates.

Windows 10 -- A summary of important product developments included in each update, with links to more details is available at Windows 10 Update History. The page will be regularly refreshed, as new updates are released.

If you are still using Windows XP and have Adobe Reader installed, please note that there will be no additional security updates for it. I suggest uninstalling it and install an alternate reader. Personally, I like Sumatra PDF. It isn't a target and doesn't include unwanted extras with the install or updates.

Enable "Protected View"

Due to frequent vulnerabilities, it is recommended that Windows users of Adobe Reader and Acrobat ensure that Protected View is enabled. Neither the Protected Mode or Protected View option is available for Macintosh users.

Added a detection routine for dark window colors on Windows 8 and later (system themes using dark window frames) to better adapt to dark system colors. Theme developers can take advantage of this by checking for darkwindowframe="true" on #main-window in CSS selectors.

CSS classes prefixed with "--" no longer stop parsing of the selectors.

Several crash fixes.

Security fixes:

Made GC suppression more aggressive to prevent issues when actually out of memory.